


I'll Hold Your Hands, They're Just Like Ice

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Temptation I Can't Resist [3]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Conversations, Cute, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot, Sweet, Television Watching, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:11:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5521565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Ziva watch an old movie together on his couch. She has questions, he has way too many answers. When it comes to old movies what's new about that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Hold Your Hands, They're Just Like Ice

**Author's Note:**

> NCIS isn't mine but I do adore it. Have kind of grown up with it, actually, so... that makes sense. This is part one of my "Holiday Story Extravaganza," where I'm putting up a few unrelated things. Just trying different stuff out to see what works.

They sat on his overstuffed sofa--tastefully understated furniture was an affectation for his dad, not a man who sprinted all day after mopes more than he ever had playing point guard through high school and most of college--arms and fingers entwined. The movie on was one of his favorites, but that didn't matter as much as the slim, dark flame he watched with. Truth be told, night's like this were about way than a film he'd seen about a thousand times. Well, maybe not a thousand times. Five hundred? Neptune's Daughter was good, Ricardo Montalban was awesome and Betty Garrett a fine example of a cute, screwball sexy redhead.

Sort of like Abbie Borin, then, just a little less likely to drop a .45 slug between your eyes if you crossed her.

He filed that away for future reference, if he ever felt more like teasing than living longer, and studied the woman beside him. Her face was scrunched in consternation, an expression he'd found wildly cute since meeting her more than a decade ago. He knew, though, it couldn't bode well for the movie, life or the universe itself making any sense when she was done.

He waited, almost forgot to breathe. "Tony... I have a question or two about this film." Ah. There it was.

He paused. "Sure, Ziva... let's not forget I posed convincingly as a professor of 'le cinema' for a year." For some reason he always knew that he said it with air quotes... he wasn't sure why, really, it was just... one of the little bunks he'd kept up to survive the grind on the streets of three sprawling American coastal cities. His old sergeant, a tall, thin, dour fellow, called him rumdumb for it at least once a shift--the verbal equivalent to a headslap--but it wasn't as if the old boy hadn't had a few of his own quirks. He was good police, though, in spite of his considerably rough edges. Most of the squad-room lifers had been and Tony strove to follow their example each day of his own career.

"Well, okay." She pursed her lips, collected her thoughts. "The first thing I do not understand is why it is so important for Jack to speak to Betty in Spanish."

"Jose told him that it's the real language of love--erroneously I might add, since that honor belongs exlusively to Italian--and since he really wanted to tear him off a piece of that..." He shrugged.

"Turkish."

"What?"

"Turkish is the language of love."

"Dare I ask why?"

She wobbled her head, unwilling to comment one way or another for a moment, before saying, "I have my reasons. Do not forget that I am an expert."

"You're not making a huge heaping helping of sense, Ziva."

"Caninim ici, seni seviyorum." The words rolled around and off her tongue with the dexterity of Cirque de Soleil acrobats.

"Okay, wow." He blinked. "I'm starting to see it. Er... what did you just say?" 

"I called you your favorite thing." She smirked. "The center of the universe."

His face fell. "Oh..."

She smacked his shoulder softly. "Sorry, sorry... it doesn't mean quite that. I was just teasing you to get your sheep."

"Goat."

"Sheeps are cuter."

"No way in hell. So..." He tangled his fingers in her dark curls, "What did it actually mean, then?"

"A kinder version of what I told you, in a way... the closest I can hand to you in English is 'core of my soul.' It's a term of endearment."

His eyes grew wide. "That's nice. And also sort of intense. But we're losing the thread, here. Jack used Spanish because he wanted Betty to like him, and Jose said to do it, so..."

"That was silly of him."

"Whatever for?"

"Love," she said, "is based on honesty, openness and communication. If she only spoke English, he should have spoken to her in that--and spoken his heart clearly and concisely."

"Ziva... you're the international spy who just offered me two totally different, contradictory meanings of a phrase in a language that I don't know the first word of. It's taken us over a decade to end up on this couch, watching this movie, a perfectly acceptable third date slash fourth weekend together as an official couple thing to do. I don't think you're one to talk too much about plain, direct communication."

She sniffed. "I reserve the right to blame any inconsistencies on my feminine mystique."

He rolled his eyes. "Here I am sitting next to Betty Friedan."

The face scrunching again. She must've known how effective a weapon it was, damn her. "Isn't that the little Russian caveman's wife?"

"Er... you've really, really lost me."

"Barney Rubel. Fred's friend."

"I think you mean Rubble, Ziva, Barney Rubble. And no."

"Then who is she?"

"It doesn't matter." He laughed. "I'm about three touchdowns behind at the two minute warning, so I think we're just going to go back to the movie, now."

He'd explained the rules and concepts of American football to her during a particularly tragic game between Ohio State and Michigan, so this didn't elicit any questions. She did have one, though. "What about the song? The one where they sing, 'Baby, I am very cold.' That one."

"'Baby it's cold outside,' Ziva, and it's a good song. Really cute and helps to develop contrast between the characters and their relationships."

"Isn't it a little, you know..." She squirmed, spoke in a hushed voice. "Isn't he being the sort of person you'd call the sex crimes unit for? It feels weird in one of your old movies."

"Now that's a pretty common mistake."

"From where I am sitting there is no mistaking what Jose is up to..." She smirked. "Mostly because it is what you are usually up to so I have a lot of first hand experience."

"If you want to know the truth a lot of it is unspoken communication between them that we're losing because we don't understand the context intuitively."

"How so?"

"Sit back, sweetheart, and let Professor DiNozzo explain." He stroked an imaginary beard on his chin. "See, there's some stuff going on here that's not immediately apparent. The line, 'hey what's in this drink,' was a stock joke, during the forties, because usually a lady's drink didn't have any alcohol at all, or maybe just a splash. That's giving her license to act out a little bit more than she would in other situations since she's a 'good girl,' and wants to get up to some business that 'good girls' weren't supposed to."

She listened intently while he went on. "Now, the whole issue of it being cold outside is him giving her an excuse to stay with him, which she needs since she's once again a 'good girl,' so that they can hang out and neck on the couch. Notice that her objections aren't coming from her, per se, but instead from others like her mother, father and a particularly vicious minded maiden aunt."

"That was another thing. An English idiom I am not familiar with?"

"Let's just say that she wouldn't be someone super familiar with necking on the couch." He kept twisting her curls around his fingers, one after another. "Anyway, since it's cold outside and not safe for her to go, she can stay and enjoy herself with Jose and have plausible deniability if anyone calls her on it the next day. She's objecting because she has to, not because she wants to... that's why they sing together in harmony at the end, to show they're on the page."

She nodded. "That makes sense to me. It is an overcomplicated mess, but it does make sense to me. So... what about the other couple? Why is it reversed with Red Skeleton and Betty?"

He didn't correct her about Jack's name. "That's just a role reversal joke. Betty, or Miss Barrett if you're nasty isn't as nice a girl, wants her some Jack and isn't about to let him go. He's so taken aback by her aggressive stance that he doesn't know quite what to do, so he's way off his game."

"I'm glad that we don't have to do things in quite such a complex fashion these days. If I like you, I say, 'I like you and would very much like sex with you.' It is much simpler."

"And yet still somehow ends up taking nine years."

"Some situations are still less simple than others." She studied him carefully a moment with those huge, melted chocolate eyes. "You know, Tony, if you put half the energy into engineering that you do these movies there would be cities on the moon by now."

"Yeah, probably," he said, then kissed the top of her head. "But then I'd be up in the lab with McGiggles all night instead of sitting here with you watching this movie." 

"Then it's probably for the best that you did not. The moon will have to wait."

"Who needs that much green cheese anyway?"

"Exactly." She smiled. "Now hold my hands... they're just like ice."

He threw his head back and laughed. She seemed to be getting it... or maybe her hands were just cold. Either way, he folded them in his own before snuggling down with her, under their blanket. She curled her legs under her, small feet in soft wool socks pressing against his leg. They'd finish the movie in a few minutes, but right now it didn't seem all that important.


End file.
